


Comfort and Survival

by lasergirl



Category: CSI: Miami
Genre: F/M, Genderfuck, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:08:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl





	Comfort and Survival

_**CSI Miami: Comfort and Survival**_  
**Title:** Comfort and Survival  
**Fandom:** CSI: Miami  
**Pairing:** Horatio Caine/ Frank Tripp  
**Rating:** Mature  
**Warnings:** First time. Genderfuck!  
**Notes:** [](http://hannahrorlove.livejournal.com/profile)[**hannahrorlove**](http://hannahrorlove.livejournal.com/) and I were discussing what would happen if Horatio Caine was a woman instead of the cockwalking man that he so obviously is. Based on a couple of tantalizing quotes from this season of Miami, she wrote [Everybody's Sin](http://hannahrorlove.livejournal.com/333134.html) (GO READ IT RIGHT NOW!). I have taken the same premise and written this.

**SUPER-SPECIAL BONUS REMIX:** Take the URL of this page and go to [ReGender](http://regender.com/index.html) to get the opposite pairing! Guaranteed to break your brain!

  
Tim Speedle's funeral was on a Wednesday, and it was a stifling, tropical day that even a breeze from the ocean couldn't dispel. There was a white haze on the water as it crashed against the breakwater, and the sound as it drifted through the graveyard reminded Tripp of the rustle of dead leaves, of birds clattering away.

He wasn't going to attend the reception, but there was a tight knot in his gut that he knew only alcohol could dissolve. He didn't want to drink alone, and so he went, standing in the back of the somber pavilion next to the bar, nursing beer after beer in his sweaty palm, waiting for the ache to disappear.

Lt. Caine was there, in a crisp white linen suit that seemed not to wrinkle, despite the weather. Tripp thought about going over to talk to her, but when he saw Mrs. Speedle approaching with her younger son at her side, he knew he should stand back.

Caine removed her sunglasses at the approach, and Tripp watched her speaking softly to the bereaved mother and her son. The boy was distinctly Tim's brother; they shared the same serious squint and turn of the head, but there was very little physical resemblance beyond the dark hair and complexion.

There was a sad sort of milling around, the migration of mourners to and from the bar, but Tripp remained where he was, drinking and chewing on his lip. There was nothing that he could have done, he knew that. A misfire could happen to anyone. If he had been in the right place, the right time, could it have been him?

That was the thought that inevitably propelled him from the pavilion, not wanting to sink any lower in his spirits, not wanting to degrade the memory of a good criminologist with too much beer and not enough air. He broke out into the blinding afternoon sunlight in search of a cab to take him to a real bar where the drinking could begin in earnest.

Instead of a taxi stand, he found Lt. Caine, standing poised by the curb with her keys in hand as if she'd been expecting him. Her eyes were unreadable beneath her dark glasses.

"Detective Tripp," she said smoothly. "It meant a lot to everyone that you attended."

"Lieutenant. Shame it had to happen this way." Tripp stumbled over his words, feeling suddenly ungainly and awkward, the proverbial bull in a shop full of bone china. "Uh, I was calling a taxi."

"There's no need, Frank," she said. "Let me drive you home."

"Ántonia." Frank flushed suddenly then, and it wasn't just the heat radiating from the baked pavement. He bowed his head with a sheepish grin. "I'd like that."

But it wasn't home that they set out for. As Caine wheeled the big Hummer out of the parking lot, she flashed a smile as she checked her mirrors and said, "You have the look of a man who needs a drink."

No matter that Tripp had consumed four bottles of warm beer at the reception. He was a big guy, and it took a lot more than that to comfort him. "You read my mind."

"There's a place near Palm Grove Drive. I'll take you there."

Frank watched the guardrails flick past the vehicle and thought of Speed. The reception hadn't put him any more at ease with his passing, and he felt more out of place with the scene investigators than before. Because he was a cop. Because his job was to protect families from this sort of thing. But he was just one man, and a sad and solitary man at that, and what difference could he make?

He was relieved when Caine's bar turned out to be a blue-collar bar, dark inside and grimy around the edges. They sat at the back, far from the glare of the Florida daylight.

"Budweiser," Tripp said to the waitress, who snapped her gum nonchalantly on her approach. "And a whiskey highball." Beer alone wouldn't do it, but he knew the whiskey could fix just about anything.

Caine said "Long Island Iced Tea" like it was the finest champagne, and when their orders came they both drank thirstily.

They were well into the second round, still in silence, when Tripp raised his head and said, "Brother looks like him. A little." He didn't know exactly why Speed's younger brother was weighing so heavily on his thoughts: it just seemed like the right thing to say. "Funny how those things go. I have a brother and sister and neither of them look much like me."

Caine watched Tripp drain his beer and take the whiskey glass in a heavy fist. She raised her tall glass in a silent toast. Their glasses touched at the rim, a tiny ping of contact in the darkened bar. One flash of connection.

Tripp shook his head and tossed back the whiskey shot. "You know how it is. Maybe I can't see it. There's probably a lot of things I don't see. What do I know? Shit happens, it happens, people live and people die, and what do we get? Another case file, a twenty-one gun salute, a load of people standing around in a hot cemetery pretending not to cry, and then your mother comes to take your ashes home in a coffee can. I've got a wife and three kids. If I died tomorrow she'd have to split the ashes four ways because my mother's in a home. I don't want to be put on a mantelpiece or under the kitchen sink or in a picture frame when I die. But it's not up to me, is it? I want what I want. When I'm gone, it's all just dust."

The tirade surprised him, and Tripp bit his lip, knowing he'd made an ass of himself. The waitress orbited past and took away his empty glasses.

"Another round?" She wiggled her hips at him and he scowled.

"Just the whiskey this time," he said thickly, wishing then that he'd been alone. Or did he? He couldn't even tell anymore. The waitress brought the drink, snapped her gum and waited.

Caine waved her away, keeping the final two inches of alcohol in the bottom of her glass.

"I don't know what came over me," Tripp said with a sigh. "It's today."

She said then, in the darkness and silence, "You want to sleep with me, don't you?"

His mouth dropped open like a fish, a fact which he tried to cover by filling it with the glass of whiskey, but the alcohol burned and bubbled on his tongue and he had to cough out his astonishment.

Caine waited for the paroxysms to subside, and she coolly took the last sip of her drink.

"Yeah," Frank said after a deep breath. "That's exactly what I want."

The waitress brought the bill, and after a stilted argument between the two of them, Caine slapped down a fifty dollar bill and settled the matter. They walked outside slowly, and Frank slung his suit jacket over his shoulder.

"My place is only a few blocks from here," Caine said, taking his arm. "This way."

Even though the sun had begun to set, the walk was by no means romantic. The humidity was smothering, and though Tripp was in short sleeves, he was already sweating. Next to Caine, he knew he looked big and ordinary, a thick-set drunken man on the arm of a goddess. He tried not to say anything as they walked.

Caine's apartment was a garden condo, a retro-styled white plaster complex with aluminum and chrome, with a curving turquoise pool bordered in lush tropical foliage nestled in the courtyard. The residents might have glanced at Tripp as he lumbered past the pool, but swept along beside Caine he felt he almost belonged there.

The apartment was cool inside, with expanses of dark, glossy wood floors and matching bookshelves. Caine took his jacket and folded it over a sedate cream sofa in the living room. By the shuttered windows were some big green plants Tripp couldn't identify. The only photographs in the apartment were black-and-whites, silvery prints of architecture that looked like skeletal structures.

Frank paused by the door, feeling the last shot of whiskey burning its way into his stomach. Somehow, he'd expected it would look like this, but he never thought he'd feel at home here. It was like an elegant, personalized hotel suite, and there'd be no way he should feel like kicking off his shoes, but when she did, sliding out of the sharp-toed heels, he knew he could do the same. He followed her across the room, and his sock feet left vapor prints on the glossy floor.

"Do you need another drink?" She pauses by a chrome-appointed bar set on a spare sideboard, one hand on an overturned highball glass.

"Sure." She poured and he gulped it for courage. The burn hadn't left his lips before she was kissing the fumes away, her body moving against his in an insistent dance.

He'd never tasted anyone like this before. The exploration took them from the living room to the quiet, bare hallway before he knew it; she led him into her bedroom and he went willingly.

The night's falling had not looked beautiful until then: the haze flared in the failing sunlight into a bonfire of reds and pinks and oranges, catching in her hair and painting her pale skin in blushes. The window looked out into the red eye of the setting sun, and they were caught in it.

"I want you to take your pants off, Francis," she said, her strong hands leading his across the buttons of her suit. He was clumsy, heavy-handed, but he got them undone and the suit jacket fell away from her body to the floor, forgotten.

How he got his trousers off, he had no idea. But it happened, and then her skirt, and when she bent over him to meet his shirt buttons with her teeth, a thrill went through him that he hadn't felt in years.

She looked the way he'd always imagined she'd look, but better. He strained to reach the delicate curve under her jaw, following the sinew of her neck with his tongue down to the notch at the hollow of her neck. And yes, he wouldn't have thought, but that pale skin did tan in Miami, and as he traveled lower he reached territory untouched by the sun's rays.

And she clung to him tooth and nail, her hands braced against the mattress on either side of his head, her knees pressed against his hips. Then, as if she could read the question in his eyes, she leaned down. "No one needs to know."

Frank felt that initial thrill swell up inside him, like the whiskey that burned in his blood, and gave himself over to her. She coaxed him to erection with her hands and before he could even make a move to reciprocate, she was already straddling him.

Even on top, she didn't break concentration. Her eyes flashed, inhumanly bright in the sun's dying glow. Her hair flared into flame, her skin flashed, her teeth, her nails, Frank was clutching at her thighs and the fire was burning inside him, too. Soon, with only a single grunt of encouragement, she gave an expert grind of her hips and brought Frank over with her, the two of them falling together, shuddering and moaning and sharing the last hot flash of daylight before it sank into the sea.

It took Frank a few minutes to catch his breath, and even longer to dull the heartbeat drumming in his ears. He wasn't surprised when she rolled neatly away from him and padded off into the bathroom on bare feet.

When the hiss of the shower sounded against the tiles, he finally roused himself from the sheets, damp and exhausted and as near tears as he could be. The sky outside was fading to deep purple and with it, he thought, the last chapter of something he couldn't quite name. He didn't want to think of what the future held. He didn't dare.  


Questions? Comments? Feedback always appreciated.


End file.
